Very sad day indeed....godspeed Mr Kalitta...

In todays Star-Ledger it was quoted as saying that what killed him was when he hit the sand traps, the car flipped over the fence and hit one of the poles that support the fence. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Seems like every time somebody slides of the rode, what is waiting for them on the other side is a TREE, and of course there is no place to go. Sad story for the NHRA racer, but for him it was a quick ending, but for the family there is never enough time to get over someone passing on this quick!

Anyone know if Kalitta hit that TV crane at the end of the track. When i first watched the vid i didn't see it or realize it but a friend of mine watched the vid and pointed it out.

yeah i heard also a cameraman died but they havent released that information.

It sure looked like it to me, but there has been no word as to the condition of the cameraman yet.

Can anyone confirm what happened to the camera dude?

From what I understand from a freind that was a medic there. No cameramen died or were injured. But that camera at the the end of the track was destroyied and he told that its was one of there most expensive cameras and they were all picking up whatever peices they could salvage of it along with all the peices of the car. My friend also worked on Scott but I will not give out any details out of respect for all the freinds and family of Scott.

RIP Scott

I was there, in almost 40 years of going to NHRA events I've seen some bad crashes but that was the worst thing I'd ever seen. From where I was at the track you couldn't see the actual crash, but you could see the fireball. Something I never want to see again.

After the engine fire the camera above the finish line tracked him down the track, but as soon as he hit the wall/exploded the cameras went off. (Not sure if NHRA turned them off or it was a failure when the camera at the end of the track was damaged.) From the videos I've seen it looks to me like maybe the chutes came out from the expolsion, they don't look like they actually deployed out under pressure?

I don't think the tracks can be made safer, E-town has a long shutdown area already, more saftey is going to be needed in the car itself.

RIP Scott.

According to an articles I've read and quotes from track pres Michael Napp, the chutes were damaged by the flames, and the car struck a concrete-filled metal pole at the end of the track that anchors the safety net beyond the sand and gravel trap.

Rest in peace Scott Kalitta.

I just talked to a sportsman racer that was there that talked to one of the Napps. Apparently he was probably knocked out by the initial explosion as he had no control of the car in the shut down. The car hit the jersey barrier, and eventually was launched into the air and hit the boom on the camera truck. The rest of the description is very graphic, but he didn't stand a chance. His survival had nothing to do with the length of the shut down, and a LOT to do with the boom being too low. The camera on the boom is manned from the ground, so there's no extra fatality like has been speculated.

From today's paper...

A DRAG RACING TRAGEDY
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
BY BILL HUNEKE Special to the Times

OLD BRIDGE TWP. -- Scott Kalitta's drag racing career began at Englishtown in 1982. At the same place, 26 years later, his career and his life ended in about 10 seconds.

One ironic aspect of his horrific crash in qualifying for the NHRA Lucas Oil Nationals at Raceway Park is that he qualified for the starting field in the run that ended his life. His engine exploded just before the finish line, and since he kept it between the lines, the run wasn't disqualified, and at 4.974 seconds, it was good enough to qualify 13th. He was in the first pair of cars to run in the final round and after the crash the rest of the round was canceled. Under NHRA rules, any run in the books counts, so he bumped his way into the field and no one else had a chance to do so.

In a truly poignant moment, the crews of the other Kalitta Racing cars all came to the starting line when he was to race Robert Hight in the first round. They gathered in a circle, then stood silently as Hight staged his car. In his own tribute, when the light turned green, Hight barely touched the gas and drove slowly down the quarter mile in the same lane in which Kalitta made his last run. The tribute cost Hight lane choice in the next round, but Kalitta's crew stood and applauded the ges ture. Hight, who lost teammate Eric Medlen in a testing crash last year, understood what it means to lose a friend and fellow competitor.

So what went wrong? Don Prudhomme said that the accident was a sort of "perfect storm", one of those situations where everything that could go wrong, did. Many of the drivers and crew chiefs gathered at the top end of the track early Sunday to survey the scene and figure out what might be done to avoid similar situations.

There is at least another quarter mile after the finish line for the cars to slow down. If they do not slow down in time, they then come to a gravel/sand pit with a catch fence at the end, anchored by two large concrete filled metal posts, and surrounded by a concrete barrier that curves to the left. Beyond that is an asphalt road that cuts across behind the catch fence, a short, two-rail metal guardrail, and after that a wooded area dips sharply down toward Pension Road, one of the public roads leading to the track. There is not much room for error beyond the gravel pit.

According to some gathered there, the gravel/sand pit had been ramped upward, presumably to prevent a car from digging into it and rolling end-over-end if it sloped downward. Usually a car getting that far down has already scrubbed off most of its speed and the gravel does its job. But in Kalitta's case, replays showed that the car just never seemed to slow. Whether the throttle was stuck open or whether the momentum was never slowed (the parachutes appeared to tangle in the wheelie bar and never fully deployed), or whether the engine explosion knocked out Kalitta so that he was unable to apply the brakes, it appears that the car came in almost at full speed, which had been clocked at 319.34 mph at the finish line just a quarter mile before.

When the car hit the ramped sand/gravel, rather than slowing, the car appeared to launch airborne. This was the point where the concrete barrier began curving left, and the marks indicated the car grazed off the top of the barrier and right into the concrete post. If you stand by the post and look down the track, you see that the post isn't so much off the side of the track as it is at the very end of the right lane of the track, the lane Kalitta was running. The car hit the post and exploded "into a million pieces", as Prudhomme related. Part of it went off to the right and into a crane holding an ESPN cameraman, part went to the left and up against the guardrail, where burn marks were still visible. Parts of the car reportedly went through the woods and onto Pension Road, other parts damaged cars parked at the top end.

Frank Hawley, a former driver who now runs a drag racing school and who has appeared as an expert witness in accident cases involving the NHRA, was among a group inspecting the area. With him were Jim Head, the top qualifier in Funny Car, and crew chief Alan Johnson, who lost his brother Blaine in a freakish accident at Indianapolis Raceway Park. Drivers Tony Pedregon, J.R. Todd, and Morgan Lucas came down in another group. Their discussions centered around the fact that something has to be done -- concrete posts should be out of the line of the racing surface; tire barriers or something to absorb impact could protect them; slowdown areas needed to be longer or have better last-ditch protections at the end; cars just needed to be slowed down from the dangers of running 330 mph; the finish line could be shortened to 1,000 feet; something, something, anything should be done so this never happens again.

Moods were somber, tears were shed, prayers were said, but racing went on. Winners were crowned, all of whom had subdued celebrations and dedicated their wins and their trophies to the Kalitta family. People remembered Blaine Johnson, Darrell Russell, Eric Medlen, and other fallen drivers. They also remembered that the NHRA made few, if any, changes to slow down the cars or improve track safety after those crashes. They wondered if now is the time for some serious changes.

Note -- The Associated Press reported yesterday that the New Jersey State Police and the National Hot Rod Association will conduct separate investigations into the accident that killed Scott Kalitta .


http://www.nj.com/timesoftrenton/sto...990.xml&coll=5

how ironic that his career ended where it started, so sad

That was truely the worst drag racing accident I have seen. He will be missed. God bless his family and team.

I feel the problem is the sand trap itself. The sand trap is designed to be used in an emergency, the problem is that you're taking an out of control car traveling at extreme speeds, and having it slam into a solid object (sand and water become solid at high speed). Couple that with cars that have no suspension at all, are highly aerodynamic, and sit two inches off the ground. What happens is the nose buries itself in the sand, and hurdles the car through the air like a catapult, just ask Del Worsham from his crash two years ago, and that was only around 80 mph, not 300. And its even worse for motorcycle riders, as it hurdles the driver through the air, like the rider from Pomona last fall, and Steve Johnson this year. And its not just the sand traps that need to be looked at, like John Force has been saying for a while now, the safety measures regarding the chassis in Funny Cars has barely been looked at in over two decades, meanwhile the cars are going nearly twice as fast.

For this crash, if you look at the picture of the end of the track;

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b1...ol/Etown-1.jpg

you see that the barriers are way past the catch net at the end of the sand trap. They usually position the top end camera above or just behind the catch net. His car went strait into the sand, so the only way he hit the camera boom is if he was already airborne. What probably happened is exactly what happened to Worsham's car, he hit the sand and the car nosed in and the momentum hurdled the car into the air, hitting the camera boom, then coming down on top of the barriers right before Pension Road.

There have been people saying that the shut down needs to be lengthened. That doesnt really make any sense what so ever. First, say you lengthen every national event track 500'. Say then you have the same situation. All that will happen will be that the car will plow into the sand at say 275mph instead of 300. It'll still be fatal. Second, I dont think that there are even HALF of the national event tracks that even have the available real estate to do that. I know at least the tracks that have been national event tracks for a long time and are important races don't, like E-Town, Pomona, and Indy (Indy has about 250' until the train tracks). Then, who pays for that? Is NHRA going to hand out a million dollars to each track for that, or does that expense fall on the track itself? Lengthening the shut down isnt going to happen, if it does, it'll take a 24 event season and make it maybe a 12 event season, then the sponsors will start to back out because of the decreased publicity, and now you have IHRA.


heres a link to the Worsham crash. I couldnt find the one crash by itself, buts its in this collection.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqx-3HJSCZU

If you look at the picture I posted, that description makes no sense. First, the barrier doesnt start turning left until after the catch net after the sand trap. Second, the car didnt have to go off to the right to hit the crane, the crane was OVER the sand trap.

Don Prudhomme and Bill Simpson have been saying the same thing.

Just saw the video clip. Horrible crash. RIP

http://www.njsp.org/news/pr091708.html

State Police Official Report

Wow, that's a lot of force!

???

??? again. so just breathing the fuel that runs the car is intoxicating to a degree?

That's what I was thinking...

I was too...but I was thinking the whole thing, the pits, the car, etc. Nzsty stuff in the air at a big event. It does not appear they are saying that had any impact on the events, though.

i think its not out of the question for a driver to sneak a beverage in the trailer before a round of racing. i know a lot of people who do it. i could never understand it though.

If you believe something will calm your nerves, it will calm your nerves. With alcohol being a depressant, its quite possible that some drivers might take a sip or two before their race to relax the nerves.
Also, there's the whole psychological aspect to it.

It is an interesting read, but really has nothing to do with how he died. No level of sobriety or intoxication would have made a difference when that engine came apart.

I still say that the NHRA has to stop this short track **** and start making moves to actually take power away and reduce the strain on the engine internals. Start taking away blower and nitro. The drop in power will not effect the way they sound or feel when they rip by, et's will only be marginally effected, and the blower explosions that have injured and killed so many drivers over the years will be greatly reduced.